As the RB19s rolled out for FP1 on Friday, it swiftly became apparent that the cars had fallen out of their hitherto very wide operating window. Max Verstappen called his ride “undrivable” as he lacked confidence when hitting the brakes only to then turn in and find wayward cornering balance.
With Red Bull finally looking impeachable, comparisons were soon made to the 2015 visit to Marina Bay when the street circuit chewed up and spat out dominant force Mercedes. Back then, the team that had won 10 of the first 12 races amid its new-found 1.6-litre turbocharged hybrid dominance departed the circuit with Nico Rosberg only fourth and Lewis Hamilton having retired.
ANALYSIS: 10 things we learned at the 2023 F1 Singapore Grand Prix
Mercedes could not definitively explain its lack of competitiveness that weekend. Hamilton fell victim to a boost pressure problem following a clamp failure but even before then, both W06 machines struggled to generate tyre temperature. Of the remaining six races that season, the Silver Arrows scored a 1-2 in five of them. Singapore proved to be little more than a bizarre blip.
Rosberg supposed that the problems were circuit-specific. And the same is expected to be true for Red Bull, especially given team principal Christian Horner is adamant that two FIA Technical Directives clamping down on flexi-wings and flexi-floors hadn’t impact his cars at all.
Asked to explain the dip, after Verstappen ran only 11th fastest in qualifying as Sergio Perez was 13th, Horner said: “It's all engineering stuff. There are no silver bullets in this business. I know all of you would love to blame the TD but unfortunately, we can't even blame that. It's not changed a single component on our car… zero.”
Instead, it was Singapore’s outlier nature that threw a spanner in the works. The RB19 has proved so strong thanks to an ability to hold a predictable aerodynamic platform. This results in consistent behaviour through different corner profiles. The secret to this is excellent ride control, whereby the car can run low at high speed to maximise the downforce-producing ground-effects.
But to cope with the bumpy Singapore street circuit, the first sector of which was laid with new asphalt, and its tall kerbs, the cars had to be raised. It is understood that compensating for these extremes lifted the RB19s out of its wide operating window.
Source: Autosport